My Blog List

Friday, May 24, 2013

Natural Law

It's an typical day for Voyager: procrastinating the journey home in order to attend some symposium, closely followed by their 100th shuttle crash in 100 days.

Chakotay and Seven wind up Under The Dome on CBS. (CBS stands for Cuddle Bear Stand-By.)

The local Ventu tribe are isolated from the warp-capable Ledosians by a barrier put up long ago by some meddling alien jerktopus or other. The Ventu seem perfectly nice, and they are eager for new fads from their sky-visitors. The guys all get face tattoos and the gals all start stapling on some silicon!

Meanwhile, Tom Paris gets a speeding ticket and must go back to boring old driving school with a boring old instructor. This is mainly so we can discover something new about Janeway: she's a stickler for rules only as long as it's funny, and not personally inconvenient. (The moment she needs Paris back, she breaks local law to get him out of it.) So add "Breaks Laws When It Suits Her" to what we learned yesterday: that she suddenly feels exploration is not worth ONE LOST LIFE. These brand-new character traits from famed law-abiding explorer Captain Janeway will become clear in the finale, I just thought I'd point it out while we're here.

"Natural Law" raises questions about developing cultures, and what more advanced cultures might owe them, and what-not, but since Star Trek does this a lot (and better elsewhere), wouldn't a better Chakotay and Seven episode have been some kind of hearing? On Earth? Having made it back earlier in the season? Where their actions as Borg tactician and Maquis terrorist are discussed and compared against the people they have become? Because this was our last chance to find out what THEIR culture is about lately. Still, we get to see Seven trip and fall down. Surely that's a series highlight.